


ebb, flow

by cryptozoid



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Character Study, Experimental Style, The Homestuck Epilogues: Candy, Unnecessary References to Law & Order: SVU, but dirk is alive, fragmented storytelling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-30
Updated: 2020-03-30
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:28:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23386636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cryptozoid/pseuds/cryptozoid
Summary: dirk is alone, then he isn't, then he is again
Relationships: Dirk Strider & Dirk Strider, Roxy Lalonde & Dirk Strider, they make out but this isnt a dirkroxy fic
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	ebb, flow

**Author's Note:**

> TW: mentions of suicide, depression, etc. the baggage you'd expect from dirk

1.

Up you look and the warm, fuzzy colors of the sunrise catch your eye. The rope drops from your hand and you stare. You drool. Bits get stuck in your facial hair. You bring a hand up to your sideburns and you rub out the spit, then smooth your palm across your face, over your forehead, down your cheeks. You press your fingers into the hinges of your jaw where it cracks. 

The rest of the day, you open and close your mouth, to hear your bones pop and lock.

2.

Your daily schedule is as goes.

5:00: Wake up and sit in bed.

6:00: Get out of bed and make coffee.

6:15: Forget about the coffee.

6:30: Remember the coffee and pour a mug.

6:45: Walk. Walk as far as you can. Maybe to the ocean. It’s usually the ocean.

8:00: Get home by this time.

8:30: Make food once calm from the walk.

9:00: Eat food. Savor every bite. Let it settle in your stomach before you do anything else.

10:00: Take a long, cold shower. Masturbate.

12:00, onwards: TV. Law and Order, usually. Somehow, they still air it. Benson challenges your secure homosexuality, Stabler reifies it. The ebb and flow is insanely arousing.

10:00: Zip your pants back up and go to sleep. Repeat.

3.

Nowadays you walk around shirtless more often than not. There aren’t many reasons to go out anymore, at least where people can see you, and anyways, your scars keep you grounded in yourself. Long, thick, and a little gnarly over your chest. They all turn out differently for everyone, and stigma seems no longer essential in this universe, so you really like them. More often than not, a free hand will idly trace them over and over again. You don’t know if that’s better or worse than cis men who always have a hand down their boxers, but nobody’s around to see it.

One afternoon on a walk you bump into Dave. It’s uncomfortable. He’s older and sadder now, his eyebrows almost permanently tilted upward as you talk, in this dopey kind of way where you can’t tell if he’s looking for empathy or offering it. He joins you to the ocean, and he talks. Before he could talk your ear off, and that much is unchanged, but something is different. Subjects are avoided. When he talks, his hands strain and soften, as if revealing too much might open the floodgates, and he’ll drown before your eyes. After twenty minutes he stands up abruptly, and you follow suit. He has to get home. He has a wife, you see, and they’re going to watch a movie, or something. You hug goodbye, and he squeezes you hard, getting a quick shove into the crook of your neck before he ejects himself from the act all together, and starts off down the street. 

That night you think again about how he practically ran from you as he left. Almost as if something could have been set off by that conversation if he stayed, something unreal risen from the dead by your presence. You are metatextuality irrelevant and no longer worth anything to the endless chain of events the universe has in plan for everyone but you. The heat death of your body has happened, and Christ, is entropy boring.

4.

Farther down the coast, you notice a stream that pours out into the ocean. You follow it and the stream becomes a river, then a lake. You sit on the edge and watch. You pick food out of your teeth.

5.

One early morning (before the run has even risen. does the sunrise dictate the morning? you never knew) Roxy wakes you up by knocking on your front door. You can’t be bothered to put a shirt on, but you can be bothered to put pants on. When you open the door, she instantly hugs you, then pulls back, looking sheepish. You let her inside and it’s only a few moments before she's comfortable in your space, picking up the mug of coffee you’d left out for her and pressing her palms flat against it for warmth. She leans against your kitchen counter and you join her there, letting your head drop against her shoulder after a few moments. You hear her laugh, then bring a hand up and run her nails over your facial hair. She mocks the mustache you’ve grown out these past few months, resting like a plump caterpillar over your upper lip. She talks to you as if you’ve always been there. As if you’re supposed to be there. One subject leads to another. You almost forget to ask why she’s here in the first place. 

Apparently, she couldn’t sleep, yet everybody else in her house could. Left feeling alienated in her own insomnia, she thought of the only other person with explicit sleeping issues. She’s kidding nobody, none of your extended circle of friends (maybe just people you know) have ever been able to sleep. But you used to be the most verbal about it, back in the golden days of your budding internet friendship. Her eyes are heavy and bagged, and she tires easily when the topic is something exciting. You don’t have the heart to tell her you’re in bed before midnight, every night.

Every second you spend together is seeped with gender. You notice this after a couple hours of sharing space. When you crack a joke, her laughter spills out of her shrill (there was a point where you loved the way she laughed and now it feels like a show put on for nobody watching) and her hand lands flat on your chest. When you look at her, she tucks loose strands of hair behind her ear. The performance is complex and methodical, and you’re the unbelieving audience, discomforted by the perversion of reality in front of you.

The sun starts to rise, so you both walk outside to watch it behind your house. She muses on how early 20s this feels, and points out that you may as well pull out a flask and an acoustic guitar. You assure her that that isn’t your vice. Daytime TV, on the other hand. She laughs.

You watch Law and Order together. She’s sitting up, settled back into the cushions of your couch, gesturing with her coffee mug and making commentary. You take up most of the space, laid out next to her on your back, going between watching the episode and her zealous reactions to a show she’d never seen before today. During a particularly slow scene, you look up and find her watching something else entirely. She catches your eyes, aware of you, then reaches over with her hand. It hovers over your chest, and you make it known that her proceeding is okay. She dips her fingers down and trails over your gnarly scars. She makes a sound by releasing air sharply out through her nose and mouth, almost a laugh. You can’t find the words to explain her face, but don’t think you’ve seen anyone look sadder.

Scene 6.

LIGHTS UP

_DIRK and ROXY sit side by side facing the audience._

_DIRK gets up, returns with a mug of coffee._

_DIRK gives the mug to ROXY._

_DIRK gets up, returns with a mug of coffee._

_A few moments pass._

_DIRK wraps his arm around ROXY’s shoulders._

ROXY  
Why are you doing that?

DIRK  
I think I’m supposed to.

ROXY  
Does it feel like it?

DIRK  
No.

_DIRK removes his arm._

_A while passes._

_Every now and then, DIRK or ROXY will get up._

_Maybe to use the bathroom, maybe to weep._

_Then return._

LIGHTS OUT  
BLACKOUT

7.

Later, you nod at her.

Roxy kisses you, hungry. To soothe an ache empty for oh, so long. To feel your warmth pool into her crevices with familiarity. She rakes her fingers through your hair, fumbling and straining joints stiff through knots and dryness. Marriage has long since subdued her. She hasn’t had sex in so long. Everything feels like sex. Her belly is angry, and you are right there. 

And you are so easy. Your body follows the direction of her hands, her pulls and prods. Sit down, I want to get on your lap. Lay down, let me kneel over you. You do, she does.

The air around you both is suffocating, enveloping you both in each other, altering dynamics. She asks for permission with every new touch and you give it promptly, so at one point she stops. Her hand moves at its own will as she skirts over the hem of your boxers, hesitant for your sake, maybe more hers. You lean up to kiss her, and her lips burn, and hiss. 

As quickly as it began, you stop. Together, you lose sync. The alluring shock of her hand down your boxers is now dull, and its sudden absence dictates the feeling is mutual. She fumbles out of you and shuffles off of you, and sits up. A little dazed but otherwise fine, you sit up as well. She looks at you, then decides she can’t anymore. You look at the back of her head for a full minute before turning the TV back on.

8.

She stays for a few more episodes. Things settle. After one, or two, she starts to narrate again, waving her fist every time a clue is made obviously, or she’s passionately decided who the perpetrator is. You nod along, afraid of hearing your own voice out loud, as if it might scare her off like a skittish pigeon. The credits play for the 5th time and she looks over and smiles at you and you smile back, hesitant and dopey. 

She has to get home, check on her kid, check on her husband. You understand. At the door, you hug again, your head finding the unreal crook of her neck. 

**Author's Note:**

> i can't handle writing whole. the idea of a linear story seems impossible. i am a playwright, first and foremost, and the "well-made play" has started to make me sick to my stomach. my brain is in fragments. so i wrote this, even though id love to write something a little more plot-driven; longer about these two. but this felt good to write, and i hope someday i can get everything in my head out of there.


End file.
